Excellent. I’d also add that all other religions are false. They may contain elements of the truth but they are false. Vatican II affirmed the truth in Islam in the form of their monotheism but it is important to highlight that Islam is essentially anti-Christ. It is anti-Christ because it denies that God became flesh and denies that the God-Man died for the salvation of many.

And the Albigenses were originally pacifist. Only after they started being killed off, then they decided to start defending themselves, but finally they were all wiped out or forcibly converted to Catholicism. So they were not revolutionaries at all in the beginning, they were pacifist.

This is a complicated topic. To call the Albigensians “pacificists” is bending the truth just a little. They believed that matter was evil and spirit good, so the most perfect act was to free the spirit from the body, I.e., commit suicide. They didn’t agree with very basic social institutions like marriage, the rule of law, or governance by any authority. Marriage and childbirth were considered evil for them because these entailed locking good spirits into evil bodies.

The sect was divided into two classes: the “perfect” (perfecti) and the “believers” (credentes). The “perfect” were those who had become spiritually perfect because they submitted to the consolamentum, or initiation rite. These were the only members who were bound to the observance of any kind of rigid moral law. Members were free to do any evil because as long as they abided in their temporal material and evil bodies, everything they could possibly do was evil anyways, except free yourself from the material realm by committing suicide. Ergo, it didn’t matter what you did and cooperating with temporal authorities certainly wasn’t a good thing, in any case. The “believers” were very numerous and could marry, they could wage war (killing was a good act since it freed the person from the physical realm), and basically whatever they chose to do – lie, cheat, steal, etc., was permissible – provided they received the consolamentum, the rite of passage, before they died to be free from this evil material world and join the “perfect” in the spirit world.

If you don’t see how any temporal state would view this group as undermining the social order and as a threat to society in general, you need to find out more about the Cathari from actual historians who know the topic. The role of the Church in this period of history is complicated, but it can’t be boiled down to “they [the Albigensians] were only defending themselves.”

Judaism would say it began far earlier than 2000 years ago, it began with Moses more than 3000 years ago.

Some in Judaism would say it began with Abraham, the “Father of Faith,” MORE than 3000 years ago.

TomMartin:

And then they would say Christianity began only about 2000 years ago, with the false prophet Jesus, whose religion brought so much suffering to the Jews over the centuries, so no way a religion of peace, as George W Bush called Islam.

And some would say Christianity grew out of Judaism and that Jesus was not only the promised Messiah, but God himself.

We can always find SOME people who will say this or that. It isn’t a matter of what some say, but of the truth.

Well, many Protestants might argue that Catholicism undermines the social order, since all the Catholic has to do after sinning is confess the sin to a priest, and the priest declares him forgiven, even if the Catholic did not truly repent of the sin, after all, the priest can’t read the heart of the Catholic confessing, and yet declares him forgiven.

If a Catholic is not truly repentant, his/her sin is not forgiven. Perhaps the priest cannot “read the heart” of the Catholic, but God can. EVERY Catholic who is Catholic knows that. And surely every Protestant who knows God also knows that.

Again, it isn’t what some or, even, what many will argue, it is the truth of the matter that counts.

Good question, upant. A very short answer to that is that in John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me." That is a fundamental truth that Christians (followers of Christ) believe in, but that belief is not upheld in the Koran. That truth comes from scripture, which is God’s word, the only source of truth we can rely on.

I used to assume that, whatever you may have thought of him, Muhammad actually existed.

Turns out the evidence is slight.

–There are no contemporaneous accounts of Muhammad outside the koran but the earliest complete text of the koran dates nearly 200 years after Muhammad’s supposed death.

–The Arabs who conquered parts of North Africa – including Egypt – did not refer to themselves as “Muslims” but simply as “believers”. We know this from the records of the people they conquered in eg Egypt.

–“Muhammad” means “blessed one” or “honoured one”. It was not an actual name prior to Muhammad.

–The present-day Mecca cannot possibly be the Mecca referred to in the koran. As the scholar, Patricia Crone, pointed out in Open Democracy:

The suspicion that the location is doctrinally inspired is reinforced by the fact that the Qur’an describes the polytheist opponents as agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms. Wheat, grapes and olives are the three staples of the Mediterranean; date palms take us southwards, but Mecca was not suitable for any kind of agriculture, and one could not possibly have produced olives there.

Since Medina and Mecca were seprated by, at most, a couple of hundred kilometres this raises a question about the location of Medina.

Islam was founded by a false prophet. It’s really as simple as that but because of the use of violence it spread. Muhammad was a lot like a previous prophet who had a large following a couple hundred years earlier, Mani. They both claimed to be the paraclete and the seal of all prophets.

The non existent Muhammad seems to have a billion followers. the faithful pray five times a day, they take fasting seriously, modesty and families are important to them. that seems to be a lot of influence for a non existent man.

The greatest thing we are commanded to do is love God, and to love them as we love ourselves.

The response would still be the same, the greatest thing we are commanded to do is to love God, and to love them as we love ourselves

I’m struggling to understand your point.

The only way to love Muslims is to lead them to Christ. If that requires us to upset them with the brutal truth about the paedophilic ‘prophet’ Muhammad then so be it. Muhammad denied the incarnation and the crucifixion; and I’ll always oppose his wicked religion. I want all to embrace Jesus Christ and I’ll speak the truth in plain language.

Manicheaism. Or maybe Zoroastrianism. I’d become one of those before I ever would believe Muhammad was a prophet.

Most of the stories in the Quran especially regarding Jesus come from apocryphal literature. Ironically many Gnostic heretics were expelled to Arabia so it makes sense the traditions of Christ would be off.

The truth would only seem brutal to Muslims who have been brainwashed by the whitewashed history of Muhammad. The stark truth about Muhammad is painful for most Muslims to hear. But it’s necessary to shatter these false beliefs before they are open to the source of true love and compassion: the God-Man Jesus Christ.

Manicheaism. Or maybe Zoroastrianism. I’d become one of those before I ever would believe Muhammad was a prophet.

Saul would have said something similar about Christianity when he was persecution them. But we know God had other plans for St Paul.
The Jews are God’s chosen people, we are chosen by Christ, and in Islam, Allah chooses whom he wills. So it seems we first have to be chosen by the same God.

I listened to the leader of the Zoroastrianism faith at an interfaith conference in Winchester some years ago. He said this, did God make a mistake when he gave each one of us a seemingly different faith?

… He said this, did God make a mistake when he gave each one of us a seemingly different faith?

There faith is a synonym for religion or belief, not faith the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Catechism

150 Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature. 17

179 Faith is a supernatural gift from God. In order to believe, man needs the interior helps of the Holy Spirit.

836 “All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God. . . . And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation.” 320

Genesis 6

[5] And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times, [6] It repented him that he had made man on the earth. And being touched inwardly with sorrow of heart, [7] He said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth, from man even to beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them.

I don’t think we can know what is truer? I am Catholic, raised in Poland and I did move around a bit. My Catholic bias (Yes we call have biases, almost everyone does about something) would prevent me from being objective about knowing this. I know a have a friend from the Middle east who is Muslim and she has her views and I have mine. But we can’t know what is more true, because they are just perspectives. My religion, my faith and beliefs are not more important than others. We are equal we may see different things but none is more right than the other. Christianity has faults, its not perfect lots of scholars have pointed that out. There are a lot of beliefs in my own religion that I don’t care for. I see a lot of sexism towards women, I don’t like how my own religion is against birth control, I don’t like how some people hate homosexuality, and I don’t like how some people in my religion can be so judgmental. But I do like things about it sense of community, belonging and having a faith that keeps me happy. There is good and bad in my religion, just like any other. Christianity isn’t the best religion, its just one of many out in the world. I like it but I am not native to think that it’s the answer for everyone. We all have are different views and I see that it makes the world a better place.